The Assembly Line

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Description

Firsthand accounts of the numbing experience of industrial work by Robert Linhart, one of the militant leftist intellectuals of 1968 France. Translated by Margaret Crosland.

Reviews

"Linhart has written a gripping narrative of his nine months as a laborer at the Citroen auto works at Choisy. With controlled rage, he conveys the pervasive sense of mindlessness attendant upon work in The Assembly Line. The strike he eventually comes to lead is short-lived, but his description of working conditions--descrimination against a variety of ethnic groups, the minutes 'stolen' or unpaid by management, the fear instilled by overweening bosses, the nausea, heat and hazardous chemicals--reads like something out of Dickens or Friedrich Engels. . . . This book is unmatched on this side of the Atlantic as an account of the tyranny of mass production and its effects in terms of human submission. Strongly recommended."—Choice